Peter Cole

Peter Cole is professor of journalism at the University of Sheffield. Before re-entering higher education he was editor of the Sunday Correspondent, deputy editor and news editor of the Guardian, News Review editor of the Sunday Times and Londoner's Diary editor on the Evening Standard

Gordon Brown is not a man spontaneously to be cross, and he never sounds cross when he is cross. Rather, he spins rage, lets it be known that he is angry. And sometimes, as he did this week, he goes on the Today programme and thwacks the object of his ire to one side as though he is irritated even to have it mentioned.

A letter to the Financial Times from GM Simon of Moreton in Marsh drew attention to the favourable comment in the paper on the view of the former US ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, that "the EU is mind-numbing in its bureaucracy, arrogant, undemocratic and unaccountable".

Hardly surprising that little attention is given to the euro in the week the election is postponed, foot and mouth rages on, the United States and China lock horns and the nation is consumed with anticipation over who killed Phil Mitchell. Very surprising that in such a week, the Sun gives so much space to coverage of Germany.

Europe and the media: We are nothing if not two-faced. Just as our latest hero emerges and is a Swede, so we treat the serious efforts of his mother country to hold a summit with almost complete disdain.